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Taking No Prisoners, In Manner of Speaking

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Joseph M. Arpaio strode into a maximum-security wing of one of his jails here the other day and was greeted by jeers and catcalls. Men shook their fists at him from behind the bars of their cells. He loved it. He had worked hard to be able to call himself the meanest sheriff in America.

"See anybody dying?" he said to a reporter, dismissing complaints of local civil libertarians that his approach is inhumane. "They're locked up; what am I supposed to be doing with them? So they lost some of their privileges. So what?"

Since his election to office by the voters of Maricopa County in 1992, Sheriff Arpaio (pronounced ar-PIE-oh) has substituted bologna sandwiches for the hot lunches that his prisoners had previously eaten, instituted random drug-testing of them, discontinued all movies in the jails and banned not only cigarettes there but also coffee.

To make room for a continuing supply of inmates, he has put 1,000 of the county's 5,600 prisoners in a tent city in the desert on the edge of Phoenix, declaring that there is no need for them to live any better than the soldiers who fought in the Persian Gulf war.

And to help keep new prisoners coming in, he has deputized 2,300 local residents to serve in a standing posse, equipped with horses, jeeps, armored cars and aircraft. Nearly 800 members of the posse are armed, and, with their uniforms, badges, radios, handcuffs, flashlights and Mace -- all of which they pay for themselves -- they are barely distinguishable from sheriff's deputies.

In short, Sheriff Arpaio, a 62-year-old native of Massachusetts who spent more than 30 years as an agent and an administrator with the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration, is putting on a demonstration of what tough law enforcement and tough punishment can look like. By his own account, he lies awake at night thinking of new ways to make headlines.

"I want everybody in this county to know that if you commit a crime, you are going into a very bad jail," he said. "I want people to say: 'I hate that sheriff. I hate his jails.'

"My whole philosophy is, put more people in jail. We've got a vicious crime problem out there, and the answer is to take them off the streets and educate them through punishment."

Not everybody approves.

"Joe Arpaio has a comic-book mentality of fighting crime," said Louis Rhodes, executive director of the Arizona Civil Liberties Union, who says the sheriff's approach risks serious abuses. "At a time when people are fearful, he's mixing the ingredients to create a kind of Molotov cocktail that will eventually blow up."

Mr. Rhodes also derides members of the sheriff's posse as overgrown adolescents living a dilettante's fantasy. "Arizona is the place where much of the mythical Hollywood version of the West was made," he said. "It's the perfect place where you can not only watch the John Wayne movie but you can get on the same kind of horse and ride around with the same scenery and the same sunset behind you. But it's still not real."

Few people here share those criticisms, though. Indeed, the sheriff has become one of the most popular figures in the state, partly because his get-tough approach is viewed so favorably, partly because his tent city, his posse, his bologna sandwiches, even his coffee ban are modest but innovative money savers in an era of government downsizing, and then too because he has a keen sense of how to entertain. He recently delighted the local press by purchasing 40,000 cut-price corn dogs to feed his prisoners, ostentatiously ordering that the wooden sticks be removed so that they could not be used as weapons.

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Before banning movies outright, he allowed only "Donald Duck," "Lassie, Come Home" and "Old Yeller." His next project, he said, is to restrict television viewing to the Disney Channel and government programming like telecasts of meetings of the county's Board of Supervisors -- "cruel and unusual punishment," he calls it.

Sheriff Arpaio said he had no statistics to demonstrate that his approach had been successful in battling crime. But he had a stack of newspaper clippings about himself, and he gave a reporter a videotape of 10 of his television appearances. On the street with his posse one recent night, he was trailed by French and Korean television crews.

When he strolled through the tent city the other day, the sheriff goaded some prisoners, calling out mockingly: "Thanks for your support! Make sure you vote for me when you get out!"

He appeared taken aback when one man, serving a brief sentence for disorderly conduct, ran up to shake his hand and said: "Sheriff Joe, I wanted to congratulate you. I worked for your campaign."

The sheriff's most ardent supporters are the members of his posse, which is so popular that even Gov. Fife Symington has joined it. "I remember, going way back, watching Tom Mix and Gene Autry and Roy Rogers," Sheriff Arpaio said, "and I always remember the sheriff swearing in business people on a horse as posse men and saying, 'Go after the horse thieves.' "

More often, here in Phoenix, it is "go after the prostitutes." On some evenings Van Buren Street, in a poor section of town, is busy with private cars bearing plastic sheriff's stars and decals, cruising back and forth, their occupants chattering with one another on their radios.

Marvin Weide, an auto-parts salesman who heads the sheriff's 400-member "executive posse," made up of doctors, lawyers and other white-collar workers, patrolled on one recent night in a $30,000 white Ford Bronco that he had bought for the posse work and equipped with lights, sirens and radios. "I consider myself a professional," he said. "A lot of people feel our life experience brings something special to law enforcement."

On Mr. Weide's final stop of the evening, just before midnight, he was among several posse members who surrounded a young woman in a very short purple skirt, very high heels and extravagant makeup.

"Is there some kind of problem?" she asked them.

"You're not working the streets, are you?" a posse member asked.

"No, I am not," she replied, and sauntered off into the night.

As Mr. Weide climbed back into his Bronco, an authoritative voice crackled over his radio. "I hate to tell you this," said the voice, "but that woman was Phoenix undercover."

A version of this article appears in print on March 4, 1995, on Page 1001006 of the National edition with the headline: Taking No Prisoners, In Manner of Speaking. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe